Area of course:

Vernacular Typography Image

Yesterday we started looking at what is known as, ‘Vernacular Typography’. Vernacular typography is when a designer is influenced by things, such as the environment or culture, and then turns an everyday common word into a piece that is both current and modern, while sometimes also working with classical ideas when dealing with spacing and proportion.

We worked in groups of 4 on the project and the word we were given was ‘reveal’.

We decided to create an anamorphic image that literally revealed the text as you moved your body to find the prime position. This is the final outcome of our piece once we photographed it:

I feel that the piece looked much better in real life when actually standing in front of it and viewing it first hand, rather than second hand from a 2D photographic image.

To make the image was very time consuming, but once we got the hang of it, we did well. Even though the making of the piece involved a lot of tree climbing, getting covered in moss and cobwebs, and even stepping in dog poo, it was all worth it in the end as we were all pretty proud of the result. It took us 3 hours to complete – we had to have one person of the group (Emily) to stand in one spot without moving for the entire duration of the process, holding up a camera and directing where the rest of us had to stick the tape. It is difficult to tell from the photograph, but some of the letters split onto different trees – for example, when looking closely, you should be able to see that the left vertical stroke on the first ‘E’, is actually on the tree behind to the rest of the ‘E’, which is on the tree in the foreground. This is the same for the ‘V’ and the ‘A’ as well.

We decided against using white tape as we felt that it would be too bright and obvious – we deliberately chose the colour black for the tape, because it made it blend into the tree more so the viewer had to really look in order to reveal the word.

During the process of physically making the anamorphic image, because we were in a public area, alongside a footpath, there was a lot of people walking by; many of who would stop to see what was going on as they passed. The majority of the passers by could not figure out what we were doing and just looked really confused, until of course we directed them to where Emily was stood and in order to ‘reveal’ the word to them. We got a lot of ‘wows’ and positive feedback which was really nice and gratifying to get the reactions that we did.

In the review today, when our group presented our Vernacular Photography piece to the rest of the class, we again got really positive feedback so were really pleased.